Highlights:

4.10.0.123 (December 8, 2017)

FBX Exporter

Added "Base Figure Pose Only" option

Added "Maya Helper Scripts" option

Added "Maya Mental Ray Materials" option

Align pane

Added "Key Node" indication

The “Key Node” (first selected node) is the node that modifications of all other nodes is based on, except when the “To Grid” option is active for any "Align" operations - in which case the grid is the key

Added "End Node" indication

The "End Node" (last selected node) is the node that defines the end of the range for "Distribute" operations

No longer blocks interaction with the UI while waiting for responses from the database

Displays "Filtering..." feedback (in the footer) while busy

Fixed an issue where starting a Product filter while one was already working could cause no results to be displayed

Improved responsiveness

Clicks within a Category View while the database is busy no longer causes each click to be queued, only the last click is queued

Scripting

Made API additions in various areas; see the Change Log for more detail

4.10.0.113 (November 3, 2017)

dForce

Fixed an issue where any surface that was a collision object ("Static Surface") OR a "Dynamic Surface" with a Simulation > Structure > Dynamics Strength (or "dForce Simulation::Influence Weights" map) that caused a vertex to have a simulation strength of less than 1 (100%) AND had "floating" vertices (vertices that exist in the geometry but did not participate in any of its faces) or faces that were not visible to the simulation (via Visible or Visible in Simulation), did not have its animated position updated during a simulation

cause of issues with Geo-Grafting

cause of issues with hiding geometry associated with nodes of a figure

Fixed an issue where the damping effect on any surface with a Simulation > Structure > Dynamics Strength (or "dForce Simulation::Influence Weights" map) that caused a vertex to have a simulation strength of less than 1 (100%) but greater than 0 (0%) was not properly scaled by the value of the Simulation > Structure > Damping > Damping property

Improved OpenCL version parsing

does not change whether or not the reported version was interpreted correctly if the return string followed the spec

Fixed an issue where winding order of faces in simulated meshes were influnecing whether or not the intersection with a given face is seen as degenerate to a Wind node

floating point rounding error

cause of an issue where polygons facing away from a Wind node appeared to be blocked

FBX Import

Fixed an issue that caused the zero frame for a property to receive a key even though the imported animation data provides no key

Geometry Editor Tool

Fixed #DS-1562: Surface groups get scrambled when the Delete Unused Vertices action (context menu) is used

File Loading

Fixed an issue with resolving image file paths

was causing missing '[' or '{' log messages

was causing slow down

File Saving

Fixed #DS-1568: Wearable(s) Preset was not writing material images for the target

Auto-Follow Properties

Fixed an issue where properties were being set 'hidden' instead of 'dynamically hidden'

caused properties to be marked as modified and therefore to be saved in scene files

Scripting

Made API additions in various areas; see the Change Log for more detail

4.10.0.107 (October 24, 2017)

dForce

YouTube Video:

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4.10.0.101 (October 13, 2017)

dForce

Now explicitly handles unused/floating vertices in a mesh

Excludes unused/floating vertices from consideration by the simulation

Fixed an issue with mapping local vertices to simulated vertices

Fixed an issue with vertex counts

Was a cause for "explosions" in some older content

Fixed an issue with visibility of properties when duplicated

Surface Adjuster

Made it possible to undo adjustments

Added support for Dynamic Surface Add-On

Fixed an issue when applying "Stiffer" or "Silkier" that could result in an unexpected change in value of Buckling properties

Holding the "Shift" modifier while clicking a button in the dialog now causes the increment to adjust by 5

Holding the "Ctrl" and "Shift" modifiers while clicking a button in the dialog now causes the increment to adjust by 10

Replaced "Make Pane Undockable" and "Make Pane Group Undockable" actions in pane group and pane tab context menus with "Undock Pane" and "Undock Pane Group" respectively; the previous behavior can be accomplished by holding the ControlModifier when clicking the action

Added "Make Pane Dockable" and "Make Pane Group Dockable" actions to pane group tab bar and pane tab context menus when a pane (group) is in an undockable state

Fixed an issue where the order of panes in a pane group were reversed when the pane group was made undockable

Fixed an issue where the Add Pane (Tab) submenu of the pane group tool bar context menu did not list available panes in the same order as Window > Panes (Tabs); entries were being sorted case-sensitive but should have been sorted case-insensitive

Undocking a pane group (or a pane) now ensures that the undocked pane group will be of a size that fits on the screen that the pane group (or pane) was on when it was docked and that the undocked pane group will be centered on that screen

Making a pane group (or a pane) undockable now ensures that the dialog will be of a size that fits on the screen that the pane group (or pane) was on when it was docked and that the dialog will be centered on that screen

Making an undockable pane group (or a pane) dockable now ensures that the undocked pane group will be of a size that fits on the screen that the dialog was on and that the undocked pane group will be centered on that screen

Scripting

Made API additions and/or resolved issues in various areas; see the Change Log for more detail

Fixed bugs and/or made improvements in various areas; see the Change Log for details

Important Notes:

!! IF YOU HAVE NOT UPGRADED TO THE 4.9 GENERAL RELEASE, IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU BACKUP YOUR CONTENT DATABASE IN DAZ STUDIO 4.x BEFORE LAUNCHING THIS VERSION !!

The first time you launch Daz Studio 4.9+, any data that exists in the content database is migrated so that it can be used in Daz Studio 4.9+.

The amount of time the database migration operation takes is proportional to the amount of data to be migrated.

The database migration operation does not delete the data that it migrates from the previous location so that it remains accessible by earlier versions and other applications, such as Carrara.

Daz Studio 4.9+ uses the same PostgreSQL database as Daz Studio 4.6 and later, and/or other applications, such as Carrara.

A portion of the data contained within the database is shared amongst versions but not entirely. For example:

Creating a category in either Daz Studio 4.9+ or 4.8 will cause that category to exist in the other version

Assigning a file to that category in Daz Studio 4.9+ will NOT cause that file to be assigned to that category in Daz Studio 4.8

Assigning a file to that category in Daz Studio 4.8 WILL cause the file to be assigned to the category in Daz Studio 4.9+

Reseting the database in any version of Daz Studio that uses PostgreSQL (e.g., 4.6 or later) will purge all of data in the database, including any data that may be used by earlier versions or other applications, such as Carrara.

After the initial migration operation, edited metadata in Daz Studio 4.8 will not be migrated to Daz Studio 4.9+.

A workaround is to export User Data from Daz Studio 4.8 and reimport User Data in Daz Studio 4.9+.

Comments

What is new in this build? Do I need to update my copy?

Daz Studio 4.10.0.x resolves several issues and implements several improvements since the 4.9.4.122 General Release. The first post contains highlights and more detail on specific fixes/changes/improvements can be found in the Change Log. All new downloads of the Daz Studio Pro BETA product (SKU: 12000) will be of this version.

Has the NVIDIA Iray renderer been updated?

Yes, it has.

*Note:The entries below come directly from the NVIDIA Iray 2017.0.1 release notes. Some entries, such as the mention of Iray Realtime, Linux, etc, currently have no bearing on Daz Studio itself but are included for completeness.

Iray 2017.0.1, build 287000.7672

Added and Changed Features

General

Support for more professional GPUs to be eligible for a professional license has been added.

Fixed Bugs

General

Incorrect derivatives of triangle meshes if only points have been changed have been fixed.

An incorrect startup message (wrong DLL name) on Windows has been fixed.

The API example for stereo rendering has been fixed (left and right eye were swapped).

Iray Photoreal

df::rounded_corner_normal with "across_materials" could have behaved incorrectly if the same material instance was used on different geometry instances and if the material used state::object_id or state::transform_* functions. This has been fixed.

Iray Interactive

The camera attribute "mip_lens_radius" now defaults to 2.0 as documented. Bug #18337.

Expressions like "base::flake_noise_texture() {+,*,-,/} value" might have been interpreted incorrectly by the material converter. This has been fixed. Bug #18340.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

Fixed incorrectly issued warning from the MDL compiler if an MDL module imports another MDL module from the same archive.

Cloning scene elements with projectors did not copy the potential projector properly. This has been fixed. Bug #18194.

The error reporting when dealing with projectors has been improved. Bug #18162.

An update problem with active projector changes has been fixed. When the active projector attribute was removed, the corresponding update failed under certain circumstances for both Iray photoreal and Iray interactive. Bug #18222.

The .mi export of the active projector attribute has been improved. Prior to this, it was exported only on certain scene elements. Now it gets handled uniformly on all scene elements.

The incorrect bounding box of geometry scene elements if only points have been changed has been fixed.

The .mi export of empty attributes of type Ref[] was broken and resulted in syntax errors in the exported .mi file. This has been fixed. Bug #18309.

Storing measured BSDF data verbatim in .mi was only reading/writing it partially. This has been fixed. Bug #18238.

When disabled, certain changes on section objects in a scene update were not considered by both Iray Photoreal and Iray Interactive. This has been fixed. Bug #18296

Editing geometry directly could result in invalid bounding boxes. This has been fixed. Bug #18171.

When invalid scene data - for instance as part of an array of references - was given, the update handling was sometimes inadvertently trying to access it. This invalid access has been fixed. Bug #18310.

An occasional crash after a web socket has been destroyed has been fixed.

Iray Bridge

A bug has been fixed where the underlying data streams were not closed properly when closing video streams of a Cloud render context until the render context itself was destroyed. The bug was triggered when switching back and forth between dual layer stereo and mono rendering. Bug #289479.

A rare deadlock has been fixed that could happen when closing a Cloud render context. Bug #289468.

*Note:This is a beta release of Iray 2017. This is meant for early evaluation and integration prototypes. Do not use this for production code. Please see the list of known bugs and restrictions below. Please always read the release notes with each release carefully because they will describe interface changes when appropriate.

Known Issues and Restrictions

General

The additional attributes enable decals and disable decals are not working as expected and should not be used. Bug #18144.

The removal of section objects is not fully supported yet. Bug #18173.

Iray Interactive

Interactive changes to the additional active projector attribute do not always show up. Bug #18180.

Added and Changed Features

General

Two new types of scene elements IProjector and ISection object have been added.

Timestamps in log messages have been changed to include now the time zone offset.

Timestamps in HTTP headers have been changed to conform to RFC 2616.

Support for AxF 1.4 has been added.

The Fermi GPU architecture (compute capability 2.x) has been marked as deprecated and will be removed in the next release (2017.1, to match the requirement inherited from the CUDA toolkit and accompanying driver releases).

Support for exporting in-memory lightprofiles has been added.

Support for exporting lightprofiles without a filename by exporting them to a file next to the scene file has been added.

Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive

An error message is now being printed if a light path expression (LPE) cannot capture any path, for example "(L D E) & (L G E)".

Section objects are now supported.

Projector functions are now available in the scene graph to provide procedurally generated UVWs, independent of decals.

Iray Photoreal

Light sampling has been improved, leading to improved convergence speed in scene setups that feature many (finite) light sources.

Motion blur performance when the instancing scene option is set to "auto" has been improved.

The convergence behavior if the firefly filter is enabled and/or the nominal luminance parameter is specified has been tweaked, resulting in (usually) increased convergence speed. Note that this unfortunately increases the time-per-iteration, but will also improve the light transport simulation precision if the firefly filter is enabled as this can result in brighter images due to less harsh filtering that is needed then.

Support for cutout opacity and base layer normal/bump maps to the auxiliary buffer outputs has been added.

The "environment_dome_ground_connect_from_camera" option and the "matte_connect_from_camera" attribute have been added to be able to control the behavior of the matte object backplate or environment texture lookup: If set to true the lookup will be done locally. Similar secondary interactions with the matte object will result in the exact same lookup for these if set to false globally. The lookup will always be done based on the true secondary simulation interactions.

Preliminary support for geometry/3D backplates via the "backplate_mesh" attribute has been added. Correct interaction with matte objects including the dome ground plane is still missing in this beta.

The architectural sampler has been marked as deprecated and will be removed in the next release (2017.1).

Iray Interactive

Subsurface Scattering support has been added.

Support for 3D backplate objects via the "backplate mesh" attribute has been added.

Support for 2-layered canvas when using single pass stereo rendering has been added.

Support for the render context option batch update interval has been added.

Support for all CUDA compute capabilities on MacOS has been enabled.

The limit on the amount of overall (finite) light sources has been removed.

Flux correction for EDFs with global distribution on finite lights has been implemented.

Light profile support for directly visible emissive geometry has been added.

Support for section plane objects defined in the scene graph has been added.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

The new methods IMdl_factory::create_mdl_texture(), create_light_profile(), and create_bsdf_measurement() allow to load resources by specifying their absolute MDL file path (as if that string appears inside an MDL module). The new method IValue_resource::get_file_path() allows to retrieve the absolute MDL file path.

If a resource is loaded via an MDL module, the methods get_original_filename() on IImage, ILightprofile and IBsdf_measurement now return NULL instead of the MDL file path (since there is no original filename available, and the MDL file path is something different). The method IValue_resource::get_file_path() provides the MDL file path instead.

The MDL JIT compiler can now use the uniform MDL state from a renderer core state if supported (as is the case in Iray Photoreal). This can greatly reduce the amount of JIT generated code in scenes with a lot of material instances that differs in uniform state only.

Fixed Bugs

General

A crash that could happen if a texture file disappeared between the first access for the meta data and the second access for loading the actual pixel data has been fixed.

An Iray Bridge bug has been fixed that caused video streams to not fully close when rendering dual layer stereo in interactive or synchronous scheduler mode. This caused video streams to be assigned with less and less bandwidth.

The export of multiple texture spaces could have caused a crash of the .mi exporter. This has been fixed. Bug #18118.

Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive

A bug causing an inconsistent mapping of box domes when seen from outside has been fixed.

MDL state::transform_normal was incorrectly implemented for non-orthonormal transformations. This has been fixed.

Iray Photoreal

Incorrect handling of overlapping objects in the IOR stack has been fixed.

The unintended behavior (differing backplate or environment texture lookup) of the "matte_connect_to_environment" attribute has been fixed. Bug #18075.

A crash has been fixed that could occur when assigning an invalid light profile.

In some rare cases crashes were seen when objects were moved around or when rendering was restarted. This has been fixed. Bug #18146.

Iray Interactive

Objects and lights were marked as not visible to be visible to picking. This has been fixed. Bugs #17749 and #17824.

The geometry disappeared when the camera was set outside of a box environment dome. This has been fixed. Bug #17950

A bug caused a wrong combination of a material ’geometry’ normal map with a BSDF normal map. Bug #18109

Glossy ground reflections disappear when enabling Path-Space Filtering. This has been fixed.

A wrong number of available render context options was reported.

The Iray Interactive library failed to load on MacOS.

Spherical environment domes occluded objects when the geometry overlapped the sphere and was seen from outside.

Network rendering striping when rendering multiple LPEs has been fixed.

Global illumination brightness bugs have been fixed.

Incorrect per layer bump processing if the layer bump is the same as the main material bump has been fixed. Bug #18110

A limitation has been fixed that caused shadows on the virtual ground plane to be ignored after 2 or more reflections/refractions.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

The MDL specification states that there is no implicit conversion from scalar to vector type, nor from float to color. Nevertheless the MDL core compiler allowed such code. Now the compiler produces a warning in non-strict mode and an error in strict mode. Future MDL versions will forbid this construct, hence all wrong code must be updated.

When the types of the range expressions are adapted to the type of the annotated entity, the definition of the annotation is now updated.
Example:
float p [[ range(1, 2) ]]
now uses the range(float, float) overload, because 1 and 2 were promoted to float. Before, range(int, int) was used, because the annotation overload resolution found that for int, int arguments before these got promoted to float.

A crash inside the Iray Photoreal processing of non-folded array constructors when a material instance was processed has been fixed. This happened for instance for arrays of spectrum constructors. Bug #18184.

The names of the builtin type constructor arguments have been fixed according to the MDL specification. Named parameters now work as specified by the MDL specification. Bug #18190.

looks as if some major iRay bugs are not solved (at least looking at the release notes).

wrong calculation of light transition into refractive media. This causes dark water for sun below 51° incident angle, and it causes the problem of "dark eyes" if refraction used for realistic looking eyes. This was complained by some vendors, too.

automatic reduction of mesh detailing without any chance for the artist to do something about it.

Load up DS. Load up a basic scene. One G3F figure, add hair, add clothing item. Move to frame 15 on the timeline, load a pose for the G3F figure. Select the clothing item, add a dForce dynamic modifier to it. Everything is fine up to this point. Bring up the task manager and note the memory in use by DS.

Now select another node in the scene pane. Watch it take a lot longer. Watch as memory usage by DS skyrockets. Wait for it to actually select the new node. Then try to select another node. Watch things just get worse.

Then clear the scene with File->New. Watch the memory usage NOT go back down. I'm looking at my empty DS window, and the Task Manager is still showing 22GB (!) of memory in use.

Load up DS. Load up a basic scene. One G3F figure, add hair, add clothing item. Move to frame 15 on the timeline, load a pose for the G3F figure. Select the clothing item, add a dForce dynamic modifier to it. Everything is fine up to this point. Bring up the task manager and note the memory in use by DS.

Now select another node in the scene pane. Watch it take a lot longer. Watch as memory usage by DS skyrockets. Wait for it to actually select the new node. Then try to select another node. Watch things just get worse.

Then clear the scene with File->New. Watch the memory usage NOT go back down. I'm looking at my empty DS window, and the Task Manager is still showing 22GB (!) of memory in use.

Something is NOT right in dForce land......

Multiple attempts at following the steps described, with various Genesis 1/2/3/8 based figures, various clothing items, and various hair styles yeilded nothing that even remotely resembles the description provided.

Do you happen to have any 3rd party plugins, or plugins that you have developed yourself, installed? If so, you may want to disable them in Help > About Installed Plugins... to isolate where the issue stems from.

Load up DS. Load up a basic scene. One G3F figure, add hair, add clothing item. Move to frame 15 on the timeline, load a pose for the G3F figure. Select the clothing item, add a dForce dynamic modifier to it. Everything is fine up to this point. Bring up the task manager and note the memory in use by DS.

Now select another node in the scene pane. Watch it take a lot longer. Watch as memory usage by DS skyrockets. Wait for it to actually select the new node. Then try to select another node. Watch things just get worse.

Then clear the scene with File->New. Watch the memory usage NOT go back down. I'm looking at my empty DS window, and the Task Manager is still showing 22GB (!) of memory in use.

Something is NOT right in dForce land......

Multiple attempts at following the steps described, with various Genesis 1/2/3/8 based figures, various clothing items, and various hair styles yeilded nothing that even remotely resembles the description provided.

Do you happen to have any 3rd party plugins, or plugins that you have developed yourself, installed? If so, you may want to disable them in Help > About Installed Plugins... to isolate where the issue stems from.

-Rob

Rob - Just checked. The following were the only ones I could find which were suspect (I've now disabled them and about to test again): LAMH2Iray Catalyzer, Measure Metrics, Mimic Live!, SceneInfoPane (SDK Example), VWD Bridge Support plugin. Restarted DS.

Okay, don't see the massive leak now. So it's one of those plugins. However, after adding two items as dForce dynamic and one static, hit simulation, ran for a few seconds and AppCrash (faulting module nvoglv64.dll, exception code 40000015)

*sigh* Guess I'll try the included tutorial file and see if that will simulate successfully.

eta: Okay, was able to successfully do the sheet drop tute. I'll go through re-enabling the plugins one by one tomorrow to see where the major futzing occurs.

BTW, I noticed that the engine for simulation is a drop-down (that only has dForce at the moment).....does this mean we might be able to hook up a different simulation engine at some point?

LAMH2Iray Catalyzer has been known to cause an issue similar to what you've described; which is why I asked the question that I did. Said plugin has since been updated by the developer and responses by customers who have installed the update suggest that the issue is in fact resolved by the update. More information about the situation/history can be found in the LAMH2Iray Catalyzer thread.

nvoglv64.dll is part of the NVIDIA driver. Typically, our initial response to crashes in the driver is to be sure that you have installed the latest version that is compatible with your hardware. We also usually recommend a clean install of the driver, rather than an update to the existing one, in order to reduce the possibility of conflicts.

The simulation API is modeled after the rendering API. More information about that will be made available at a later date.

I'm still experiences crashes, even though I disabled plugins, reinstalled the drivers completely, changed through the settings of Best, Better, Good, tried non-offensive poses that gave no intersection.

Some clothing actually works, other explode on Zero pose, and some make the system crash. No fun so far, lots of frustrations.

Big FYI- if you got a gtx 980 it. Don't try to Deforce Sim hair. I thought I would be a smarty pants and try it and it got about 67% simulated and it took me out hard with the BSOD, forcing me to do a memory dump and rebooting..

when i checked all that was in the log file beside showing me restarting daz was these 2 lines

Big FYI- if you got a gtx 980 it. Don't try to Deforce Sim hair. I thought I would be a smarty pants and try it and it got about 67% simulated and it took me out hard with the BSOD, forcing me to do a memory dump and rebooting..

when i checked all that was in the log file beside showing me restarting daz was these 2 lines

Has the group bug been fixed? I've tried like 3 versions of 4.9 and had to roll back because of the group bug; DS locks up when I try to add figures (G3F, G3M, etc.) to or remove them from groups. Groups are essential to my workflow so this bug is a deal-breaker. I'd like a version of DS that is fully compatible with G8, but I'm at the point where I don't want to bother going through an install just to find the bug is still there and then have to roll right back to 4.8.

No, I haven't reported the bug, though I'm pretty sure other people have. I've certainly complained about it in the forum several times.

Bugs seem to persist more than they used to. Chrome browser has a bug in the search function (CTRL-F) where it doesn't update properly (works fine the first time, but if the page updates, search doesn't search the updated part; change the page and it doesn't update, either. You have to change the search term to get it to update). It's been like that for months, through every update, like millions of people haven't experienced it, and thousands haven't reported it.

Excuse a newbie question as this is the first beta release since I started using Daz3d.

Installed the beta - pointed it at the same content libraries and it found none of them. On top of that when reloading the old version of daz3d it also lost the content (nothing in content manager, smart content despite correct directories specified and the files still present.

Excuse a newbie question as this is the first beta release since I started using Daz3d.

Installed the beta - pointed it at the same content libraries and it found none of them. On top of that when reloading the old version of daz3d it also lost the content (nothing in content manager, smart content despite correct directories specified and the files still present.

Any help appreciated.

David

That looks like the content management service is not running. Do you get an error message when opening DS?

1. very crashy almost always the second attempt to do anything (OS X 10.11 MacPro + 980ti) - crashing the GPU with MMU access violations (can send crashlogs if someone wants them). Trying really quite simple things - a solid base object + clothing which is free-falling (i.e. dropped to the floor). The sheet dropping example worked one time, and then crashed on a second attempt with a modified pose for G8M.

2. I don't really see how to inspect / set properties for different kinds of dynamic materials (perhaps need to read more instructions)

I'm on a MAC and I can't upgrade to 4.9 because IRAY doesn't work at all. It works perfectly in 4.8. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling 4.9 5 times and the installation freezes when that content management thing starts near the end.

Excuse a newbie question as this is the first beta release since I started using Daz3d.

Installed the beta - pointed it at the same content libraries and it found none of them. On top of that when reloading the old version of daz3d it also lost the content (nothing in content manager, smart content despite correct directories specified and the files still present.

Any help appreciated.

David

That looks like the content management service is not running. Do you get an error message when opening DS?

Thanks Leana. That was my thought as well. I received the error message when I first launched the beta. Uninstalled and reinstalled the cms package and it started okay on relaunch. Decided to take the opportunity to totally remove DAZ from my system and install it again. I know a lot more now about the file structure and dim vs manually installing certain packages these days so decided to tidy everything up. Upon reinstall both the live and beta copies are fnding content as I install it. Thanks again for the response.

1. very crashy almost always the second attempt to do anything (OS X 10.11 MacPro + 980ti) - crashing the GPU with MMU access violations (can send crashlogs if someone wants them). Trying really quite simple things - a solid base object + clothing which is free-falling (i.e. dropped to the floor). The sheet dropping example worked one time, and then crashed on a second attempt with a modified pose for G8M.

2. I don't really see how to inspect / set properties for different kinds of dynamic materials (perhaps need to read more instructions)

Strangely enough I can't see the beta in DIM. I've clicked the "Show Hidden" nothing. I've looked under all the tabs for it, nothing. I've even made sure I had the proper boxes checked to show and download the beta builds under my prefs ... nada. So not sure what's going on with this not showing for me.

Never mind... my bad. I didn't have Public Build checked in the prefs. Silly me! Grrrrrrrrrrr

I wonder if it would be possible to make a dforce surface to behave like some kind of a rigid body, so it still gets affected by the dynamics interaction, but does not bulge around?

I did a simple test where I created two cubes, one ontop one on the bottom, with some space between them, then bridged them with a tight band like structure. I assigned each a surface and made the top one kinda static with dynamics strength 0 and the cloth in the middle like actual cloth, while I raised all the stiffness parameters in the bottom one. The result is quite nice, in that the top one stays rigid and the cloth is dangling around between the two with the bottom one dragging the middle one down while keeping its shape rather well, but just not quite as stiff as I would like it to be :)

The idea I had by trying this out is to later on make elements like a sword tabard that can dangle around while a figure moves, but of course it would need to have some parts be affected by the force, yet keep its surface from bulging around like actual solid structure.

Is that somehow already possible, and if not, would you be able to get something like that done in future builds?

I wonder if it would be possible to make a dforce surface to behave like some kind of a rigid body, so it still gets affected by the dynamics interaction, but does not bulge around?

I did a simple test where I created two cubes, one ontop one on the bottom, with some space between them, then bridged them with a tight band like structure. I assigned each a surface and made the top one kinda static with dynamics strength 0 and the cloth in the middle like actual cloth, while I raised all the stiffness parameters in the bottom one. The result is quite nice, in that the top one stays rigid and the cloth is dangling around between the two with the bottom one dragging the middle one down while keeping its shape rather well, but just not quite as stiff as I would like it to be :)

The idea I had by trying this out is to later on make elements like a sword tabard that can dangle around while a figure moves, but of course it would need to have some parts be affected by the force, yet keep its surface from bulging around like actual solid structure.

Is that somehow already possible, and if not, would you be able to get something like that done in future builds?

The Start Here thread does say

dForce is a physics simulation engine that is included with Daz Studio 4.10.0.x. Over time the dForce engine will continue to evolve and become capable of even more, but the first thing we are introducing with this new engine is the simulation of cloth.

I did try a couple of things hoping to be able to make solid elements rigid enough not to deform but still able to swing as solid objects, but it didn't really work.

Future builds could definitely provide for 'rigid' objects, simply by adding a new type....like a 'Add dForce Rigid'. It actually simplifies things a LOT for the simulation, since the object only changes it's transforms, and the bounding shape doesn't change either. It'd need a few different parameters, but from the point of view of simulation, it's actually a lot simpler.

The real problem with rigid dynamics would be adding constraints (single axis hinge, dual axis ball joint, etc.). But even that isn't that complicated.

How do we save a dForce simulation? Are they cacheable? I couldn't find any mention of this in the documentation.

Edit: I should also add that this is a very exciting update, with the obvious highlight being dForce. I just got Syflex for LightWave a little while back as I'd given up on seeing a new dynamics implementation, but this is looking top-notch so far.

How do we save a dForce simulation? Are they cacheable? I couldn't find any mention of this in the documentation.

Edit: I should also add that this is a very exciting update, with the obvious highlight being dForce. I just got Syflex for LightWave a little while back as I'd given up on seeing a new dynamics implementation, but this is looking top-notch so far.

I'm not sure it's possible yet to save the simulation data itself as a preset for a given outfit, if that's what you're asking. However, you can save the clothing itself with the dForce modifier applied in the mean time.